#but letters & popups work

[transmechanicus]

How to write in TMBTE runes

>Be windows user

>go to PC>Windows>System32>eudcedit.exe

>Run it. This opens a grid of currently empty unicode values that you can add symbols to

>Pick one, i started with the top left, E000 and descended from there (E010, E020, etc)

>You will be presented with a space to draw pixel art. Thank Sleep these designs are geometric.

>Draw the rune for A. Edit, save character. That symbol is now saved to that unicode value in your computer. Make sure they're as big as you can manage and exaggerate the little > < on some letters bc detail gets lost at smaller font sizes.

>Draw the rest of the 24 runes. Save each one. I did some well planned cutting pasting, rotating, and save-as-ing to save time (KLMN are all the same shape just spun around)

>Close the program, nice work

>Download and run the Microsoft Keyboard Creator

>File, Load keyboard (i used US-International), then click the displayed key for "A".

>In the text box that opens for that key, type U+YourUnicodeHere (Ex: U+E000)

>Repeat for every rune.

>Open Project, Properties, make sure the name and description is something recognizable and that it's saving to a preferably empty folder.

>Project, Test to make sure everything looks good.

>Project, Validate to confirm the keyboard is functional (it will give you a popup saying it validated but with warnings. Ignore them, it's just saying the runes are weird and won't display online)

>Project, Build DLL and Setup Package. This confirms your keyboard and packs it in an executable that will add it as a variation of whatever keyboard you started with. (Mine shows up as English - Sleep Token bc of my description)

>When the build is done, open file destination, run "setup" and approve changes.

>Give your computer like 5 minutes, then i recommend a restart. Without the restart, trying to use the new keyboard seems to crash for the first couple minutes, but after 30 minutes it should adjust regardless. When you're back on, in the bottom right you should see the additional option in your active keyboards. You can delete or double check the uploaded keyboards in "Edit Keyboard and Language Options" in Settings

>Lmk if anyone has issues, i'm not a computer scientist but this is working fine in Notepad, and any other text program operating out of my laptop such as Word or Powerpoint. Anything online that is pulling its unicode references from elsewhere (google docs, tumblr, presumably discord) is going to either Not Register that you're typing, or will display empty boxes. Still gnawing on an idea to fix it, if you're a computer person with ideas lmk.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Why Spell Check (and some grammar check) isn't AI

So I've seen in the wake of Nanowrimo some people claim that spell check is AI and thus is like Gen AI, and I saw the claim originator on Twitter, but when I pressed them, they basically tried to say they had a degree in computer science, so when I pressed into them if they knew what they were talking about, they couldn't answer because obviously don't know about AI.

For some background I've done some light programming (If you look at the Korean name generator, that's all me). And I also have relatives that did programming.

Here, I can lay out how spell check works without AI or a fancy algorithm.

The oldest spellchecks didn't use AI or Gen AI, they used what is your basic corresponding tables.

If you use something like google sheets (database), you can do this pretty quickly yourself though with a lot of manpower.

Here is a list of commonly misspelled words.

Add that with another table with how they are commonly misspelled.

Then you need a table with "common typos"

Then you need one more table for "Words the user adds."

The algorithm is basically this: Set up a loop. A loop is a mechanism that has an algorithm (or set of instructions in it) which repeats until a certain instruction is met. This loop with this algorithm will check for words. In this case, anything with letters, usually encompassing ' and - (though some programs ignore dashes).

So[,][ ]it[ ]will[ ]look[ ]at[ ]letters[ ]in[ ]this[ ]sentence[ ]and[ ]figure[ ]out[ ]if[ ]it[ ]is[ ]spelled[ ]correctly.

The first loop in the previous sentence will look at the word "so" by selecting everything it knows to be a letter in English. Tada "S, o" Then correspond that to the dictionary. So shows up in the dictionary listing it has of English words. Thanks Webster. (If you're British, the OED)

The Algorithm concludes the word is spelled correctly. No more work needs to be done on So. The next word is it "i, t" correspond that to the dictionary and so on.

If you have a "bad word" for example "alot" then the work is, word is spelled incorrectly. Next "work to be done" is to find out if this word is in the "commonly misspelled" words list. If yes, then underline the word in red to get it corrected.

AKA run Algorithm to underline word (usually a few lines of code if you're doing it the old way).

Then the algorithm moves on. The function of right click/Cntrl click is saying, OK, this word, "alot" is it commonly misspelled? Here are a list of corrections according to this other table. This is the work that needs to be done: We need a popup table. We need to pull from the database this misspelling, and then we need to pull from this other database and pull corresponding correct spellings based on this. Then you set up an if-then If the user clicks on this word, change highlighted word.

This is your basic spelling algorithm. You do not need gen AI for this or AI.

Grammar works similarly. You need a table, the type of speech it is (n, v, adv, adj) and then to load in "rules" one should use. You do not need AI. You need some basic programming skills. On the table of somewhere between "Hello, world" (1) and "OMG, I created artificial intelligence like Data " (10) My "Korean name generator" is like 2.5? in difficulty (minus all of the language and cultural knowledge). Haha. Still mocking myself. But a Spellcheck is not far from that. it is like 3. You could build one fairly easily with PHP and database access to a dictionary and misspelled words with corrections.

But Google pulled from the Enron Emails.

In this case, you can sorta fuzzy logic it and create bigger algorithms, mostly to sort out the *grammar* and *New words* that were used that aren't already in the database, which basically is another loop, but with an add to database function. (i.e. table). Then you would correspond this with another loop to look at "odd grammar" and flag it.

You can use AI to sort it faster than a basic algorithm, but nope, you do not need AI to correspond it. A basic algorithm would do. You can also use AI for "words that look similar to this one" and "Words commonly used in place of this one"

But overall, You do not need AI for a grammar check. You only need a dictionary, a set of commonly held rules of English and exceptions (maybe some Noam Chomsky, though he's controversial), and then some programming skill to get past the hurdle.

But Grammar check could use AI

AI as it stands is basically a large algorithm to match large datasets to the words you use. But the problem is that the datasets are taken from users who did not volunteer to put in that information.

It is not Data on Enterprise have novel experiences of every day and learning how to function in the human world by processing it through a matrix of quantum computing.

So WHEN grammar check does use AI, the AI is mostly doing the crunching of the corresponding the information into a more neat table option, as I understand it. It is not the same thing as Gen AI or your average spell check and Microsoft algorithm from say 2000.

Those are not equal things. Instead, adding Gen AI to say, Microsoft Word, is more like stealing your words for the machine (which BTW, Microsoft absolutely did and you need to transfer out to Anti-AI programs/Apps.) and corresponding them for Gen AI future use for people who can't write worth a damn, and then "averaging" it out. Elew. Who wants to write to the average? That's anti-Creative.

And just because it uses an Algorithm, doesn't automatically use AI.

Look, I can write a algorithm now:

Loop: If you want to be strong...

Go outside.

Do cardio.

Go lift weights.

Make sure you eat a healthy diet and balanced which includes reducing refined sugars and do not eat bad fats.

That equally is a set of instructions, but that's not automatically AI.

I programmed my calculator to spit out the quadratic formula. And this isn't even officially programming, this is a script. Dudes, if you're going to call that AI, then you need help with learning computer programming.

The threshold for making AI v spellcheck is a lot, lot higher programming than a set of simple tables and a loop that looks for letters and spaces corresponding it to an existing dictionary. If that's you're threshold for AI, then when you type words, you are caught in an algorithm. Ooooooo... OMG, when you pull up a dictionary to spellcheck yourself, that's AI. C'mon. The threshold is a might higher to make AI or "victim of algorithm" as in Twitter.

So anytime someone says, "All Spellcheck uses genAI/AI" Laugh in their faces and say no. 'cause like, I'm a terrible programmer, and even I'm like, Meh, not that hard to set up spell check, give me a solid dictionary database and I'll do ya.

That said, A human will beat AI on grammar anytime and will be able to sort weird spellings faster and A-OK, or not.

[canon-in-too-deep]

Free Crime and Punishment Typeset

I still remember reading this book back in English class and, as a native English speaker, struggling so much with the Russian names. Still, it was one of the more intriguing reading assignments for me personally. The exploration of Raskolnikov's (I did not remember that. Thank you copy + paste) mind throughout the novel was fascinating, and an overall enlightening read on human psychology, and the depths to which our personal justifications and desires conflict with society and our own morality... So of course to represent this I stuck a big ol'hatchet on the the title page. Reeeaal subtle design work, I know. Anyway, this FREE typeset is available in half letter (letter folio) format here.

Any errors in the pdf, feel free to let me know! And if this way helpful, please consider leaving a like/reblog! You can follow this blog for future typesets. (I'm getting close to 25 total now, which will be a cool inconsequential milestone to unlock, much like Steam achievements when they popup during all my futzing around in games I should really read the tutorials too...).

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

ARIIIII HI HELLO HEY !!! i got a bit busy (i hate assessments) but I'm back and I will soon read all the things I added to my tbr that you posted !! soooo excited hehe :3 I wanted to ask how you guys are playing phanpara.... i also want to see all the fun stuff and play.. ☹☹ manifesting the banners for you so you get them easily <333 - ❄ anon

❄️ ANON MY LOVE !! welcome back!!!! :3 i hope your assessments went well…. i’m proud of you for working hard 🫂🫂🫂 AND PLS don’t feel any pressure w the tbr, my fics will always be here when you have the time !!! <3333

BUT YES . phanpara ….. i’m not gonna lie to you anon getting it downloaded on ios was a whole trial of will but 😭😭 it’s actually. fairly simple. it’s easier on android (you just need to download a bunch of apps to emulate it!!) but on ios you need to manually change your appstore region to japan. and then download a vpn app. the biggest downside w ios is that there aren’t really any good translator apps!! :(( on android you can get bubble translate which lets you translate on screen text really easily…. but you won’t get anything like that on ios. so you won’t understand what the characters are saying (unless you take screenshots and throw them into an image translator)….

buuut if you’re still fine with that!! (assuming you have ios and not android)…. then i’ll leave the instructions down below :33 i’ll try to make them as clear as possible but just ask if you have any more questions!! i’d love to help!!! phanpara is sm fun…

ok so . here are all the steps !!

1) make a new appstore account!!

this step is easy :3 … i don’t. remember how i did it tho. pretty sure you just go to the appstore browser page?? or something.., and then you obv just need to add a name and a functional email address!

when you’ve made a new account, make sure that your ios is logged into it . just go to settings -> click your profile -> click on the appstore icon -> log out from your usual account and log in on the new one!! then you just need to press ”show account” to go to the next step.

2) change your region to japan!!

this is the complicated step. it’s not really that complicated though it just took me a while to figure it out 😭😭 you can use this site for reference if my descriptions confuse you lol

when you try to change your region to japan, you’ll be forced to add your name and your address. you can use your normal name (assuming it’s made up of english letters), but you’ll need to generate a jp address!! it’s actually kinda easy. this is the website i used!! it lists all the information you need in the correct order, so just . copy and paste into the settings . (i believe you’ll need to choose the prefecture manually, so just look at the prefecture name on the website and match it with the options ios gives you!!) street name, prefecture, city, zip code, phone number… etcetc. this may or may not be an illegal process but if you’re a gacha enjoyer i’m assuming you like living life on the edge.

you’ll also get the option to add a payment method, but you should be able to skip it by choosing the option at the bottom. this is important because otherwise it won’t let you change your region (unless you happen to have a japanese credit card hanging around)….

when you’ve entered all the necessary information, click the blue text in the top right corner to move on!! if you’ve done everything correctly you should be taken to the jp appstore :3

3) download phanpara + ovpnspider!!

now you’re almost done!!! downloading phanpara should be easy, just search for it in the appstore and. well. download it. when i did this i had to click through some ios popup page..??? but just . click your way through it. trial and error. until it lets you download the app <33

while phanpara is loading, download ovpnspider!! this one is super easy and doesn’t take up much space at all. when it’s finished downloading, just go into the app, go to the ”jp” folder and connect to one of the vpns!! the status has to be ”alive”, but any of them should work :3

4) play phanpara !!

now you should be good to go <33 the only issue is that the vpn can be a little difficult sometimes. phanpara might take a bit to load, and throw you out if the vpn disconnects, but as long as you just exit the app and change the vpn there shouldn’t be any issues. could be a little bothersome sometimes but you get used to it quickly!! just make sure that you’re connected to a vpn, enter phanpara, and play :33 for me it takes up roughly 5gbs of space, so make sure your phone can handle it!!

aaaaand that’s it <333 i’m sorry if this is just. gibberish 😭😭 or if i’m making it sound more complicated than it is …. and pls let me know if it works for you!!! i’d love to be friends in game if you make an account :33 then you’ll be able to use my gojo in battle … hehehe ……..

[en-abime-updates]

June 15th

Morning

Mal posts the player-made zine on FreeDF. You can find it by adding the URL slug /dans-des-circonstances-eternelles to en-abime.com. She has decided to visit Tati, although it is unknown where she is right now.

Since the zine mentions a twin by name, they visit it and share a PowerPoint of all the information they had about Thomas (accessible through clicking the glitch on the page.) (It is unknown where the twin is right now.) A letter in a different font (the “T” on “The Incident”) links to w-h-a-t-h-a-p-p-e-n-e-d.

Summary: This PowerPoint includes a photo of Thomas and the details around his disappearance: He was a freshman exchange student at Princeton University in New Jersey whose parents had died 2 years before of the flu. He went missing in October of 1915 – he checked into a carrel in the library and never checked out. (The footnotes note these carrels are now in Firestone Library.) He was “kind of an introvert” but an “excellent student,” so no one noticed he was missing until months later. The Works Cited page of the PPT only lists en-abime.com as well as the page for requesting visitor access to Firestone Library. Players speculate this may be the site of a geocache.

The zine page also links to Mal’s Favorite Gigs in NYC. This page begins as a blank page and populates with pop-ups addressing the reader as you scroll down, before showing a list of Mal’s bands and performance venues – potentially another geocache lead? It also features a voice that speaks in blackout poetry, similar to the blackout poetry sections of the CYOA.

Summary: The pop-ups ask the reader to record information about themselves (to presumably join the abime) – “Log on now!” “Share abundantly your photographs, experiences, and stories with your friends.” It then presents Mal’s list of gigs as “a gift.” The list of gigs lists the band and location of each performance, as well as a short description of Mal’s experience performing with them. Mal’s handwritten note at the top reads “if you haven’t got an I.D., even a fake one, FORGET ABOUT IT, DUDETTE!” Below the gig list, the pop-ups ask the reader to “Match them with the right keys to the kingdom” for an “instantaneous cure,” “but hurry, a machine for living won’t be hanging around for long.” Below this, the blackout poetry voice begins, imploring the reader to “stop feeding us.” Their requests and cries for help are similar in tone to the ones in the CYOA.

Mal’s Favorite Gigs page leads to HELP, what looks like a customer service page with a set of Q&As and a form. The page is written by (and the Q&As are answered) by the same voices from the Mal’s Gigs page (Ad pop-ups and blackout poetry). The header at the top of the page toggles between “archive” and “appetite” on hover, and “appetite” is “all” while “ARCHIVE” is “NOTHING.” The form is “for Urgent Retrieval Concerns” and asks the reader to “DESCRIBE: WHAT YOU SEE. WHERE YOU ARE. WHERE YOU HAVE SOUGHT. WHERE YOU HAVE NOT YET SOUGHT.”

Summary: The two voices describe themselves as brothers, and have very different personalities. The popup voice describes itself as our “friend,” and encourages the questioner to find “these things” and “make them happy.” The question text eventually goes off the rails: (“Why is my skin so heavy? Why are my eyeballs so dry? Why are my bones so wet?”) to which the popup text voice answers, “You aren’t there yet, friend, but you’re doing well!” In contrast, the blackout poetry voice describes itself as our “bastard creation” and says that if we are “here” it has “failed.” It begs us to “please don’t go looking for this [...] please instead forget all about this. About them. About me.” On the left side of the page are a list of what seems to be various manifestations of HEAVEN, a series of tips that seem to be for geocaching, and there is a form at the bottom that asks for location, time, name of who they are looking for, and a description of their location.

Afternoon/Evening

Players submit form responses to HELP, most of which receive unhelpful answers via email. 

Players submitting questions to the form received a response from the email en-abime-dot-com@gmail.com from a username THE ARCHIVE THE APPETITE. Most contained a screenshot of their question and a popup image reading “USE TOOLS FOR THEIR INTENDED PURPOSE.” Some emails contained an additional image reading “HA!HA!HA!” 

At 2:41 PM EST, player sylvan receives a reply to his email “bonjour” with the additional image “I DON’T SPEAK FRENCH” and the subject line “19/20” A minute earlier at 2:40, another player Vincent received a similar email with the subject line “20/20.” Later, Vincent receives another, this time with the subject line “18/20.” Players decide not to send more emails until figuring out more about the “INTENDED PURPOSE” so the countdown stops. 

At around midnight, player charles entertainment cheese sends a question: “We have looked everywhere. We are Thomas stretched across En Abime. I want to know where he entered from - Princeton? New Jersey? The Library? We have looked across as many pages as we have. We have found him in PDFs and websites where his past self is recorded and archived.” This receives a different response, without a countdown number, hinting that these questions are closer to the “INTENDED PURPOSE” and “for greater knowledge on more subjects, use your library often!”

Overall Theories

Players think these pop-ups and blackout text are two new characters, the Archive and the Appetite, which may be made up of the Abime itself. They seem more powerful than the other characters and may have placed the flyers around the different locations. They seem to want us to find whatever information they don’t yet know, and are interested in physical geocaches. 

Next steps from this update:

Follow these geocache leads

Crack w-h-a-t-h-a-p-p-e-n-e-d

Figure out the purpose of the HELP form

[taskforcedistortion]

Wait, what do you mean you guys are in charge? What happened?

Sssso

One of our friends! Wanted to visit someone else to take a break from some stuff he's dealing with

The computer, the TASKFORCE DISTORTION WORK COMPUTER I AM ON 24/7

Got a POPUP WARNING labeled from: "THOSE BEYOND YOU"

Saying that it wasn't a good idea- hold on let me get the screenshot

[Picture ID: A popup warning on Cassiopeia's computer. Labeled from 'THOSE BEYOND YOU'

In bold large letters

WARNING. A PROTAGONIST OF THE BLUE BERRY ACADEMY IS ATTEMPTING TO LEAVE THE TIMELINE, ALLOW HIM TO EXIT?

[Y/N]

And in smaller letters

Please note, that if you allow this, events that he has already done will be reset

End of ID]

SO!

YEAH I'M KINDA FREAKED OUT-!

-C [Purple C for Cassiopeia]

[quackity1999]

"i mean— it's a weird mix. some of you come in the form of letters, some of you are the weird, noisy pop-up ads, some people i meet in person. it's a variation of stuff."

LN ARCHIVES: MASTERPOST ON Q'S CHAT!!

OKAY. cracks my knuckles.

much like how other characters in the dream smp have physical manifestations of their twitch chat, i thought it'd be fun to apply that here — since this is a c!quackity ask blog.

anons function similarly to a twitch chat, which is why i decided that q's chat wasn't a duck pond for originality!

3 categories: people / actual pop ups / and letters or documents.

[ TAGGING SYSTEM ] + [ PINNED ]

POP UPS: this applies to all asks that aren't letters or in-person situations.

these asks are visual pop-ups (boxes, like those virus advertisements you get on a computer, ykykyk) that show up in quackity's peripheral vision. the pop ups can't interact with him physically since they're just text— but they pile up and overlap if he doesn't address them. he can swipe them away with his hands, of course. quackity either responds to them verbally (only if he's alone to avoid looking bonkers.) or mentally (if he's got company.)

examples ; THIS , THIS , THIS , AND THIS .

LETTERS / DOCUMENTS: these asks are formatted + physical, often delivered to quackity's desk. pretty cut and dry.

examples ; THIS, THIS , AND THIS.

PEOPLE: these asks are physical interactions. yk. when people are within his office, or give him something, or touch him, or come to give updates about LN— etc. anon examples: 🟣👓, ♾️🪞, and a few others.

examples ; THIS , THIS , THIS, AND THIS.

NOTE: literate interactions are NOT my primary style of writing. i'm an ask blog with some teeeensy aspects of roleplay— i almost always write in dialogue! yes, even in response to some literate interactions. i don't respond to rp starters unless i'm writing an event + have planned those interactions with another writer. respect that :3 thank yew!! [ also for the love of prime herself, pleeease, READ PINNED. it'll help. i swear. it's easy peasy lemon squeezy. 5 mins! ]

lengthy asks always tend to overwhelm / slow me down, and while that isn't a bad thing, i do prefer short-mid length asks on a regular basis. this doesn't rule out occasional long letters & shit tho :)

EXTRA INFO:

as for the anons side of things, i'd imagine it's similar to either watching a TV show you can send in notes / commentary / questions into, or literally being a citizen of LN. or, for some, working in the nation itself. (we need more workers pleasepleas.e pleas e its so fucking cool dude i love writing professional fancy shit olealplease i beg i beg i plead)

the anons cannot press too hard on changing what lore i have set up. you can add in little details if you like, or base details off of what canon i've already shown thru this blog (LOVE THAT), but anons aren't going to be aware of absolutely everything nor can they possess or control quackity's actions. keep that in mind <3

IMPORTANT: i've seen a few dsmp blogs using my pop-up idea, and while that's chill, i politely suggest taking inspo from the cc's interpretation of their chat. :3

i made quackity's anons function as popup ads rather than a duck pond or something basic, since it reflects his chaotic sort of character— from what i recall, tommy (?) had a nokia phone, jack uses his ingame headset, phil has crows and techno has voices.

bascially, i'd much rather see ppl coming up with their own versions of their anons/chat. or at least credit me for the pop-up idea!

i hope this clears things up :3 if there's questions or confusions i am more than happy to respond!

[keganexe]

Setting Up a Zine Layout for Print (with Affinity Publisher)

Listen up shits spoons

Heyo back with another guide for folks new to art and layout! In this one I'm gonna talk about setting up your zine for print with a commercial printer (Like Mixam). If you wanna look at my other guides you can see them here (as of the time of this one I've done one other guide, but I enjoy doing these so I'll probably do more as time permits)

I'm specifically gonna be talking about using Affinity Publisher 2 because its what I do all my professional work in, but the ideas should hold solid for other programs like Adobe InDesign, Publisher 1, or others! I'm also gonna talk specifically with Mixam measurements since they're my printer of choice.

I'm going to get real into the basics of this one, so if you've done a good bit of layout already this is probably all old hat for you. I'm specifically skipping around the topic of Color Management, but I talk about it a LITTLE.

This is a lot of text, so if folks would like I can probably record the setup some time in the future if that would generally be helpful? Lemme know what we want haha

Okay lets dive in though

So lets start at the very beginning which is choosing a page size. I'm going to assume we are working with Letter sized paper because that's what most folks in the US do, which means we want to set the pages up to be half letter. This is gonna give us a zine that folds like this just for clarity.

So lets hit File->New... up top, and you'll get a screen that looks like this. We are going to change our measurements to be Page Width 5.5 and Page Height 8.5 which is our measurements all folded and whatnot. We want to set our DPI to 300 so the printer has plenty to work with and we don't end up with pixely shit on the pages.

Under the Pages tabs things should default correctly, but we want Facing Pages to make layout a little easier, and we want to start on the Right with a single page. This tab should look like this

Next we are gonna hop on over to the Color Tag the long of the short of this is we want to work in CMYK/8. I'm specifically working with the color space used by Mixam within CMYK/8, but your computers default should be fine here, so just set your Color Format to CMYK8, and let it choose the default for Color Profile.

I don't personally set Transparent Backgrounds because I think they're a fucking eyesore, but that's dealer's choice and if you prefer them what's wrong with you good for you.

Color Management is really a pretty complex topic I'm not really good at talking about because I don't have the knowledge I should on it (I've largely worked in Black and White!), but here is a really solid primer on why we want to work in CMYK over RGB, and why that's so important for printing.

Hopping over to the Margins and Bleed tags, we are gonna do some minor changes to the default. If you're laying out something over say 60 pages I'd look at editing the inner margins here a bit.

I'm gonna go off the Mixam Full Bleed Print guidelines, and give myself some extra space for safety, but if your printer has other thoughts you should follow those instead. I've found that generally these guidelines work for most projects so you're usually safe to follow this bit as is. If you don't know what Margins or bleed are, I'd just read through the full bleed print guidelines linked above because it's a great primer. If you don't care or already know, keep reading.

For Margins we are gonna include margins and set our inner margins to 1 inch, and our outer/top/bottom margins to .5 inches

For Bleed we are gonna set everything to .25 inches for safety, Mixam only needs .125 inches.

Finally, so we don't have to go through this every single time, we are going to save this setup by clicking the button up top (next to where it says Letter* on my screen). I'm calling mine Mixam Half Letter Zine so I can remember it next time.

FINALLY you can click Create at the bottom right of the popup, and if you've done it right you should be greeted with a screen that looks somewhat like this

Now we're gonna set up some Master pages, font and paragraph styles, baseline grids, and guides to get the best looking zine possible.

At the top of the screen we wanna go to View->Preview mode, and make sure its unselected. This is gonna make sure we can see all the setup we are doing now, you can unselect it at any time (by hitting the toggle or Ctrl+shift+w) to see what the zine looks like without our guidelines on once we get them setup. Also on the view menu we want to turn on basically everything except Grid in the top bit. Here's what your menu should look like, and what your page will look like if things are setup right!

Okay so lets start with Masters! Setting up a good flexible master page or two is a great way to make sure your Zine keeps a consistent look throughout, and it carries your setup across pages! Look to the top left of the working space, and lets go work on Master A by double clicking on it.

I'm going to setup a quick set of guides just so I can lay things out a bit easier! While on Master A hit View->Guides and under Column Guides we are gonna add in 2 Columns and 3 Rows with a Gutter of .125 inches. The margins should be correct, and we want the Spread to be at x:0 y:0 which it should by default. In a lot of circles you will hear this called The Grid, but my friend Clayton did a great guide on this already so I'm linking that here. I also like to set some Horizontal and Vertical guides just so I know where the exact center of the working area is, so I'm going to make 2 Vertical Guides at 2.5 and 8.5, and a Horizontal Guide at 4.25 inches. The long of the short here is this gives us a lot of room to snap things to in the future. I set my Column Guide to pink to make it stand out a little more, but when you export this it'll disappear so just set it to whatever color works best for you.

With the master set, click back over to Page 1, and you should see it now has a series of guidelines based on this master. Hell yeah.

Lets move on to text styles now! These are going to save you a lot of hassle in the future with making sure everything matches, and works how you like. Double check that you're off the Master, and then lets make a text box using the Frame Text Tool, and lets get ourselves a text box somewhere on this page. The placement doesn't SUPER matter here because we are just going to erase it at the end.

Toss a few lines of text into this box, I usually use Title, Header, Body Text, and then 3 lines of Bullet Text

Now we are gonna hop into the Text Styles menu. I keep mine pinned on screen, but if it isn't visible, you can find it under Windows->Text->Text Styles

Now highlight each of these lines of text, and double click the appropriate text style from this menu (ie we are gonna set Title to Header 1, Header to Header 2, etc). It'll look something like this when you're done

Now we're gonna change each of these lines of text to look how we want! For the example I'm making my titles and headers in Bellybeans FG, and setting the rest of the text to Open Dyslexic and resizing them so they look good.

My page looks like this now

Now's a great time to mention that there is a difference between Rich and True black, and it's confusing and it fucks a lot of folks up. The link up above (the primer on CMYK above RGB) talks some about your blacks, and links to a follow up article about them! You can skip reading any of that for now (but like you should), because the tldr here is going to be make SURE that if you are using Black you have the color set to c:0 y:0 m:0 k:100 if you don't wanna have issues later!

Now we want to update our font styles to match! To do this we are going to go back and individually highlight each line of text, and then right click the matching Text Style, and hit Update. The screens should look like this.

Next we are gonna set up a baseline grid! This makes it so that text on one side of a spread is gonna line up correctly with text on the opposite side of the page, and just helps with making pages look good and even! We want to set the grid Relative to the Top Margin, and then set the spacing to whatever you feel is correct in your heart of hearts. These are the settings I've used, but do whatever looks good here, there are probably some hard and fast rules for how to do this well, but I do not know them.

On my specific example you can see my Bullets are really spread out, and I don't like that, but the Body Text lays out much nicer. Lets deal with some spacing issues!

We are gonna hop on over to the Paragraph tab now, for me this is another tab on the Text Styles Window, but if you don't have it visible Windows->Text->Paragraph should bring it up.

So for me personally I want all my bullets to be on the following line, and not skip a whole line between them. I'm going to highlight all my text, and in this menu I'm going to go to Spacing > Space After Paragraph and set the amount to 0 pts.

You can also go further into this tab to change some more rules about what your bullets look like (things like how big your tabstops are, what the bullets look like, etc) but I'm not getting into that here!

After all this I'm gonna hop back into text styles, highlight each line of bullets, and Right Click->Update style on each of them (Just like we did previously!)

It's really tempting to skip this section of setting up your zine, but it enables a lot that can really help you out a ton in the long run. Having standardized Headers allows easy updating of headers and titles across the document, easy setup of Table of Contents for folks using them, and also on export is going to auto-bookmark the pdf for folks using PDF formats. It really pays to take time and set things like this up correctly the first time. After you're happy that this all looks good, you can go ahead and erase this text box.

Now we can break into zine layout proper, but if you just wanted basics you can stop here! Whatever you do from here is gonna print pretty decently.

If you'd like to stick around I'm going to set up some slightly nicer master pages, talk about why I use multiple masters, set up page numbers, and get us a table of contents!

So from hereon I'm just gonna work on laying out a basic Zine. So let's hop back into our Master Pages, and start setting up some flexible masters. I know I want at least two masters, one where I have text on both pages, and one where I only have text on the rightmost page. For right now we are going to just work on the spread with text on both pages, so I'm going to create a text box on both pages within the spread that fills the entirety of that guide we set up earlier. On the leftmost page, I'm going to right click the text box with the Frame Text Tool selected, and I'm going to choose to Insert Filler Text so I can see how everything looks.

Make sure this text is in your Body Text Style, and then click the little triangle on the text box

I'm now gonna select the textbox on the rightmost of the spread. If you did it properly, your page should look somewhat like this.

After I'm happy with this page, I'm going to erase the text in both boxes. I wanna add in some page numbers now. They aren't going to fit in the boxes here, but if you remember correctly I left myself a little bit of wiggle room when I set up the margins! Mixam needs .25 in clear, but my boxes are all .5 inches from the edges of the page. To make sure I don't egress the space too badly here, I'm going to set up a new horizontal guide from the View->Guides page we used previously, and I'm going to set this guide at 8.25 in which is the true bottom edge of our workable space.

I'm going to create new text boxes for our page numbers that line up with the outer edges of our guides, and the new true-bottom line I just set up.

It looks like this, but there's an eye icon which means no text in this box is going to be visible!

No worries this is because our baseline grid isn't playing nicely here, we are gonna break it in a moment, but for the mean time lets right click this text box, and select Insert Fields->Page Number

On the left page I'm also going to Bold and Left Align this box, but otherwise keep it in my Body Text Style. With the text all highlighted, I'm going to hop into the Paragraph window again, and scroll down to Baseline Grid->Align to Baseline Grid, and turn that option off.

My page now correctly shows a single # in the spot I'd want my page numbers to be. When this master is used, that number will automatically update to be correct! I'm going to duplicate this text box, and drag it onto the right page of the spread, and set the alignment to Right. I'm going to refill the textboxes with Filler Text for a moment, and turn Preview Mode on so I can make sure I like the page. For me this master now looks like this

I'm going to duplicate this master now, and on the left page of the spread I'm going to remove both text boxes. I like to name my masters so I know what they are at a quick glance. This is going to leave me a second master that looks like this.

You can get really involved on your master pages generally! I'm not doing anything fancy with this one, but previous projects have that heavily used masters might have pages that look more intense and include things like photo boxes, more complicated sets of text boxes, and even some text to use as a guide as I go.

Lets hop back to Page 1 of our doc, and leave the masters behind

Page 1 is going to be the title page for the book, but it likely now has a bunch of details now that you don't particularly need. If you have a master you don't want on a page, you can right click the page, and click Clear Masters.

I'm almost out of images on this post so I am gonna go mostly imageless from hereout. I'm gonna toss some text on pages, and then make a table of contents, and get my page numbers fixed up since most people don't actually want to count the Cover as Page 1 as far as page numbering goes.

With the project laid out, and the pages where I want them, the actual "Page 1" is going to start on Page 5 for me. Looking at the pages on the left side, I'm going to right click Page 5, and click Start New Section. On this new section I'm going to fill it out so the new section starts on page 5, and restarts the numbering at 1. Here's what it looks like for me.

On page 3 I want to include a Table of contents so if the ToC window isn't visible I'm gonna hit Window->References->Table of Contents, and then in this window I'm going to hit the insert button. You can really dial in a lot of settings here, but as long as you've been using those Text Styles I mentioned previously, it should be pretty easy! Since I've been using only Heading 2 to start chapters, I'm going to unselect Heading 1 since it is effectively only being used on the ToC page and the cover, and I don't think folks need help finding those. This ToC feature rocks and as long as your page numbers are correct, and you use your text styles it should auto-update! If it doesn't there's a refresh ToC button on this window as well. Regardless (and perfectly using my 30th image) this is what it looks like for me now.

You'll also note I updated the text styles here as well! Anyway this is a real overview of zine layout for print, there's probably more things I should cover, but I'm out of images and tired so I'm leaving it here. If this was helpful I'm gonna put this template up on my itch after I clean it up some down the line.

I'm gonna have to come back with a Part 2 that talks about exporting and whatnot, but this is all I can realistically fit in a post for now.

If you get any use out of this and wanna throw a few bucks my way you can do that here

and if you have any questions I'll answer what I can! Just shoot me an ask on here, or like annoy me on my discord (its in my pinned post)

okay thanks bye

[britt-kageryuu]

The result of a funny thought after watching a video. I don't know what I'm talking about in this, the idea was just funny.

----------------

April was slightly annoyed, but still excited as she enters the building in front of her which pushing a rolling cart with a carrier on top.

The building was hosting a Cat Show.

Mikey had heard about it and wanted to enter Sunny, but couldn't get the day off, too many people wanted that day off already. The others had similar schedule problems, and/or they had streaming obligations on top of that.

So he begged April to go in his place. So here she was,entering a cat show as a favor for her Little Brother, who now owes her a Gourmet Lunch Bento everyday for 2 weeks.

She approached the checkin area to ask what she needs to do.

"Name, Breed, and category?" Asked the Receptionist.

April for a second almost said her own name, but caught herself, "This is Sunny, she's a Short Hair, and the category House Cat. She's my brothers cat, but he couldn't get the time off since he just learned about Cat Shows recently." April relays as she fills out the necessary papers, and whatnot.

"Okay, here's your number, just keep your ears and eyes out for when your group is called for judging." The Receptionist says while handing April a couple packets of information, and points toward the room where people were setting up their waiting area.

April gets to her table, and sets up the little popup tent with a letter tray, cat bed, and some small toys. All while giving Sunny pets, treats, and making sure her bandana/collar was on properly. It had one of the 2 or 3 tracking devices in it, you can never be too careful.

The day goes on with April talking with others there, all showing off their cats, showing videos or pictures of said cats, and talking about how things work.

Sunny is fairly popular among, getting lots of compliments, and requests for pictures. Some asking about the lovely feline.

And April would tell them, "My Brother found her after she somehow got into the car in a closed garage. We took her to the vet, clean bill of health, but she had no chip. And after not finding any missing cat posters, or getting responses for our Found Cat. So We kept Sunny and the rest is history. My Little Bro believes it was the cat distribution system choosing us."

Things of course got a bit tense when it was time to bring the cats up for one of the multiple rounds of judging. Some people were more dramatic, and claiming bribery when their Precious Kitty didn't get any ribbons.

April just tried to keep her cool, and be glad that Cass and CJ were to busy to join her, though sadly Sunita was at a family event so had to opt out of this event.

"Is it always like watching one of those kids pageant shows? Or am I just 'Lucky' to witness this drama?" She asked one of her table neighbors while sending an update to Mikey about how things are going.

"Well, it's not always this dramatic, but it happens pretty often. Why did you ask if you were 'Lucky'?" One of them who had a Maincoon.

April sighs with a flat look, "I was known for my weird Luck in school. Once had the sprinkler above me go off, and it was the only one to go off."

Her table neighbors were trying to tell if she was joking or not, but gave her the benefit of the doubt.

Once the next few rounds were done, and the final Judgment. Sunny now proudly had a ribbon, but let's not elaborate on which color or place it was for. They were all proud of Sunny anyway.

----------------------

Masterpost

I was recommended a video of someone going to a Cat Show for the first time, and remembered that they existed. Then thought 'Any Mikey with a cat would want to enter them in one, but then remember the turtle thing... then ask April for Help'.

But I don't know how Cat Shows work, so I just kinda worked off the video I watched, and some of the comments under it.

[whirligig-girl]

Ooze that's learned how to pilot

Eaurp held up the bright yellow disk cassette with one hand and shook their other hand until their fingers threatened to fling off. They emitted a high pitched whine, and a hissing sound, in addition to the sounds of wobbling jello from their shaking body.

"What is it?" Slamtha said.

"ITS! MY VERY OWN COPY!!!" They said, still vibrating with an intensity that never failed to amaze her.

"Of..." Slamtha said.

"Whuh? Oh! I told you about it!" Eaurp said. "During History class?"

"Oh right. Starship simulator?"

"SHUTTLECRAFT SIMULATOR!" Eaurp said. "Come on! Let's get to a library computer!"

"Oh... I dunno," Slamtha said. "I'm not sure I'd be very good at it."

"Oh pleeeease Slamtha? I'll go clothes shopping with you even though thinking about clothes for too long makes me want to dessicate!"

"Hmm. Alr--"

"Come on! It'll be fun!" Eaurp said, grabbing and tugging Slamtha's hand so hard they almost melded together.

Slamtha laughed. "Ok, ok, fine, let's go."

At the library, Eaurp plugged the disk cassette into the disk drive, and opened up their account on the desk terminal. Slamtha scooted up next to Eaurp with a laptop terminal in hand.

"I got to try this before, at the Starfleet booth at the job fair. Apparently they don't even distribute these for personal use, I had to write a letter to Starfleet's public relations department, and then I had to use the disk burner in the computer science lab."

"Oh, why didn't we just go play in the computer lab?" Slamtha said.

"They're running on like 15 year old mainframes. I think it might still work, but only if I set the computer up as a single partition. And I don't want to get kicked out."

After the disk drive lit up green, Eaurp grinned at Slamtha, who stared back with a neutral gaze.

The menu loaded in as a faux-LCARS display. Eaurp had already been through the training level on a Type-9, so they skipped it and went right for the Class-F, the vintage shuttlecraft that they used to use on the original Enterprise.

There was a barebones character select function, since they were in multiplayer. Slamtha chose a generic human woman. Eaurp figured they may as well do the same. The session began, and Eaurp walked their character around the shuttle, taking in its details. The graphics were so realistic, they must have been based on original schematics to look this good.

The mission was simple--land the Class-F on the M-class planet in a storm, drop off supplies, then take off and return to orbit.

Slamtha and Eaurp's characters sat down. Eaurp leaned over Slamtha's console, pointing out all of the individual displays and controls. Eaurp sat to Slamtha's left, so they couldn't see her frown.

"I... don't think I'm cut out for this," Slamtha said.

"Oh come on, you haven't even tried it yet," Eaurp said.

"Ok, well, don't say I didn't warn you."

Eaurp flicked the internal power switch, then used the communicator item to call for the airlock doors to be opened, and then engaged the antigrav tractor-pressor, and slowly rose the shuttlecraft off of the hangar deck. Eaurp looked around, scanning for the manuevering thrusters. She flicked a switch, and the simulated computer made a satisfying clickit-a-clickit-a sound. She pressed the arrow keys on her keyboard and the translation joystick on the shuttle moved forward.

"As soon as we get out of the shuttlebay, we'll be outside of the Constitution's inertial dampeners. Be prepared to keep us pitched right. Crossing through space doors in three... two... one..."

"Ah!" Slamtha shouted, as the stars suddenly lurched and spun.

"Woah! Woah!" Eaurp said. "Turn on auto-inertial dampeners!"

Slamtha frantically looked across the simulated console and the keybind popups and grimaced. She settled on hitting the spacebar. Both character's views got thrown back into the seat as the impulse engine was activated. From there, it all happened fast. The game lagged a few frames, then the warp nacelle got larger and larger, and then the shuttlecraft clipped into the nacelle. The shuttle shook and vibrated violently as horrible collision sound effects overlapped.

"Woah, look!" Eaurp said, switching to the external camera. The shuttlecraft was clipping through the great big cylindrical warp nacelle, with the impulse engine still firing. "They simulated the reaction control system on the Constitution!" Manuevering thrusters shot bursts of gas from the ends of the Consitution's warp nacelles, from behind the covered grates, fighting the impulse engine exhaust from the shuttle.

"WHAT DID I DO?" Slamtha shouted.

"Haha! I think you mixed up the stabilizer key and the impulse engine ignition, right at the same time that I mixed up the ventral translation key with the throttle keys!" Eaurp said.

"So... it wasn't my fault?" Slamtha said.

"It's both of our faults!" Eaurp said.

"Oh. Hah. Hahaha!" Slamtha said. "Ahaha. I thought... nevermind."

"What?" Eaurp said.

"I... I dunno. I was nervous because I knew you'd be so much better, but, ahah, we both just really suck at this!" Slamtha said.

"Let's go back to the tutorial level and try again!" Eaurp said. "The LCARS layout of the Type-2 is a lot simpler, and they do a pretty good job of simulating it here!"

"Ok, ok."

5 years later

Tears and melted sclerae rolled down Slamtha's cheeks, dripping onto the command console. She was pretty sure she still remembered how this thing worked.

Why had Eaurp left her. Why had Slamtha's kin turned their backs on her. Why had everything fallen apart so quickly. Things were finally good. They were finally good. She was a glob-dam astronaut candidate for the United Mellanus Space Program. She was going to get to do archaeology on another planet!

But! She tore it all apart! This little psychological episode was gonna make sure she'd never see the inside of another spacecraft again. So she'd better make this one count.

Slamtha sobbed, barely able to see the LCARS display and the front window. She saw the mellanoid space program safety officers running back to the shuttle. Now or never. She tapped the impulse engine control and the engine ignited. The shuttlecraft slid on its nacelles like skids, until she pressed her fingers to the steering widget, just barely managing to pitch up in time to avoid hitting the wall at the edge of the spaceport.

Ascent to orbit usually only took a few minutes, but Slamtha had other plans. She tilted straight up, climbing in a straight line path out of the atmosphere, rocketing ever higher and faster. She wiped her eyes clean and tried to reform them, and got one last look at the planet below.

"Alright," sniffled Slamtha, "which one of these is the warp engine?"

Slamtha swiped up on the main control panel and then found a promising looking button, then tapped it. The rescue shuttle jumped to warp, aiming no particular direction except for far, far away.

Slowly, Slamtha's cardiovasculature calmed down, and her skin softened, and she thought about what had just happened. Then she started crying all over again. What had she done. Maybe... maybe if she just turned back now and explained what she had been through, then... no. She'd just stolen one of the only warp capable ships on Mellanus, and taken it on a joyride. She'd never be able to go back. What was she going to do? Set a course for San Francisco and run into Eaurp? Slamtha didn't even know what star Earth orbited. Maybe the LCARS in the shuttle did.

She didn't want to see Eaurp again. That backstabbing good-for-nothing so-called "friend" who abandoned her just because she couldn't handle a fraction of the transphobia that Slamtha had to put up with her whole life.

She had her own ship. She could go anywhere. She could go places that didn't care if you were a woman or not. She could find some... alien university, maybe? And finish her archaeology internship somehow? But... but... no, no, none of this makes sense. Eaurp got to escape! Why couldn't she escape? Why couldn't she--a red alarm flashed on the screen, indicating a ship was approaching. They were hailing her.

"Fuck." Slamtha said. "It's probably the Feds come to arrest me. Ok, ok, act natur--"

The ship shook violently as a bright green light fired at her.

The display panel read "shields down."

A green tractor beam locked on. Slamtha tilted her head to look up above her. That wasn't a Federation ship. It was huge, dark green and orange, winged, with glowing red spikes coming out of the hull.

"Computer, identify?" Slamtha said, her voice shaky.

Vessel is a heavily modified Orion Class-II freighter. Klingon derived engines and type-V disruptor strips.

"That doesn't sound like a freighter."

It wasn't.

[artemisiasthings]

bookbinding question: how did you format the pages so that they read in the correct order when stacked and folded into signatures?

Hi! I use Word to create my signatures and typeset them to read like a book. I followed amazing tutorials from Hana Bobb on TikTok - I'd really recommend looking at her content but here's the bare bones! (If you use other applications this probably won't be as helpful for you, I'm sorry!)

First things first, you need to get your word document set up. From the top ribbon, go to Layout, then select Margins > Custom Margins which will open a page setup popup window. Here are the page size, margins, and layout settings I use:

My margins are set based on US Letter sized paper. I find that they're not too big but allowed me to trim the foredges and don't eat up the text in the spine.

HOWEVER, if you're typesetting a really large fic, you're going to want to increase your side margins! For example, I am typesetting a tandem read of TRTTD/ATWT that is 900+ pages and my side margins are .65" to compensate for the deeper, rounded spine and the amount I'll have to trim off the foredge.

If you're uncertain if you like your margins, you can do test prints of the first signature to see how your margins end up looking.

Our page orientation is landscape because, although we want our individual pages to be portrait, each landscape page will have two portrait pages.

By setting the "multiple pages" setting to book fold, you will automatically print into signatures that you can then sew and glue into a book.

Sheets per booklet is really personal preference, just in mind that one sheet of paper is equal to FOUR book pages (two front and two back). So my 32 page booklets take 8 sheets of paper. Some people do 7, others do up to 10! It's harder to punch holes in 8+ pages of signatures, but easier to sew in my opinion.

From here, you can input your text! You can post the raw html from AO3 into the document which which bring over the text and general formatting, and you can format chapters, headings, title pages, etc. from there. This is a time consuming process but is really helpful when familiarizing yourself with how typesetting works. If you do go with this option, I'd again recommend Hana Bobb's detailed tutorials - she goes over incredible info for newbies and I wouldn't be half as good as I am without her guidance.

If you're not interested in deep diving on typesetting, you can do what I do now which is use a Word macro from the macro mommy herself - Blak Books Bindery.

She has some incredible macros which allow you to quickly and easily add text dividers, drop caps, and so much more to your typesets! The one I use the most is her "Raw-Text Formatting" macro which allows you to copy raw text directly from AO3 into the word document and turn it into a formatted typeset through computer magic. I usually just use this as a starting point and heavily adjust the aesthetics from there, but it saves so much time moving author notes, formatting chapters into sections, adding title and publishing pages, etc.

After your typeset is formatted how you want it, you can print it! I typically go into File > Print and select "Print to PDF."

This allows you to save the document as a PDF. You can print directly from Word but I haven't tried it since people say it really messes up the formatting.

Your finished typeset file should look something like this:

Just print this double sided with "flip on the short edge" selected, and start folding! Even if you're super confident about your typeset, I would highly recommend test printing your first signature on paper you don't care about. I've caught misaligned page numbers, margin issues, and other problems this way and saved myself the headache and reams of paper.

That's it! I hope this answered your question, I went probably went overboard but I'm not sure what knowledge you're working with so I wanted to be thorough. If you or anyone else has any other questions, feel free to reach out through asks or DMs!

[artemisandhersilverbow]

If there are no fans of Taylor's lyric vids it's because I'm dead. They add so much richness to already elite lyrics. But I was immediately suspicious during The Manuscript video.

Because my understanding of what a manuscript is, is the following:

I had assumed, like many prior to the album drop, this was meant to make us think of books. These days in publishing a manuscript will be typed, but it's not the book in its final form.

In the Tortured Poet's library popups in a couple cities, there were a lot of books. Blank ones, damaged ones, ones with the names of TTPD song titles, and notably a handwritten "Story of Us." That hand written Story of Us then showed up in the Fortnight MV. Interesting...

Of course, any long time fan knows the role Taylor's diaries play in her music making as well. Her music has always sounded confessional and it's been one component of her musical super power. During Lover promo, excerpts from her diaries were sold alongside the album. She's underscored their importance many times.

So imagine my surprise when The Manuscript video... doesn't show a manuscript...

That is a screenplay.

And I click back to the first seconds of the video... looking at those underlined letters and asked myself... is it The Man U Script? *if i was a maaaAAn*

The way she has these lyrics written out in screenplay form... we're watching a scene narrating the "She" character reading something unpublished, perhaps handwritten, perhaps a diary, maybe lyrics. I assume the "HE" which is in voiceover is what she's reading and her lines are spoken.

Anyway, I wont break down the full scene because I haven't watched it in this new light yet. But this tension between the song name at first glance - something unpublished or handwritten. Messy, unfinished, not meant for the public, perhaps even at its most authentic... vs. characters in roles. Men that are scripted... well that's adding a whole knew dimension to it.

I really appreciate how before I watched this, the song feels like it's told in vignettes and time moves dramatically. But I didn't appreciate the play on POV initially (and there's a ton of it in this - very good - album)

Also noteworthy that, yes, there seems to be reference to the ATW short film, which makes even more sense to me now.

But anyway, the narrative about this album has once again become about the men. Which isn't new, but always disappointing. Genuinely, I got something really different out of this album by not focusing on solving those romance riddles with my own confirmation bias. The other story, the one about a singular artist, percolating beneath the surface is far more interesting to me.

It wouldn't be the first time she's called out the people who consume her work in this album and, frankly, it's one of my favorite things about it. It's cutting and it's earned. It's also heartbreaking. But for a song that confused me, is the bonus on all the regular editions of TTPD, I think it would be a lot more satisfying if this is the message she's leaving us with. That once I publish my work, my stories, in it's final constructed/edited form, I've moved from the place I was when I experienced them. And then when its published the truths you seek to dig out from my words don't belong to me - it belongs to you. Just a thought.

Edit:

I think there are a lot of ways to read this. In conversation with the fans/outsiders is the main one, which I touch on before.

But for a more literal reading using some clues from the video, I know how Taylor can’t resist utilizing a number when it’s available for a little clue. Now I think reading each page number by era… is actually a fun (still devastating) way to do that. As you’ll imagine 3 and 4 are where those lines show up.

But we end on 7 where she’s accepting she doesn’t own those albums anymore, but all that she’s left with is the manuscript - which I would guess is her music (published and unpublished) and diaries.

Lover era + promo diary era was her first entirely owned era, but as the song says “looking back” or re-recording/vault tracks/doing it on your terms is the only way to move forward.

Also how about the hard to catch glitch over the words “the actors”?

[nitrosodiumgameanglia]

Changing the Font

To better fit the fact that the writing is on paper, I added a font called Study Clash. I think this helps the suspension of disbelief, and makes the default Unreal font less jarring to see.

Many games have famous and instantly recognizable fonts. These usually help to sell the setting and help any text popups fit the world instead of being intrusive and immersion-destroying.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has a few fonts (including one entirely in the Daedric alphabet), but this font is the main one. It somewhat resembles a typical "Olde English" style of lettering, but more readable by modern people. The same font is used in all menus, including the journal and inventory, which keeps the immersion. It makes it seem like you are rifling through old books and scrolls when you check your spell lists and skills, which keeps you rooted in the rich setting of Vvardenfell better than a more overtly "gamey" menu would. This is one of my few complaints about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, that it ditches the paper backgrounds for a more minimalist menu system with a normal font.

Quake's main font is quite interesting. For one, the Q is a spike being driven through an eclipse, but the other characters are archaic and rusty-looking. This works for Quake's setting, which is a journey through dark and terrifying dimensions that have been corrupted by the Lovecraftian elder god Shub-Niggurath. Most of the locations are somewhat medieval; sunken oubliettes and massive imposing castles. The textures are covered with rust, moss, and other entropic grime, and the font is no exception, almost like it was engraved into wrought-iron.

Minecraft's menu font is called Mojangles, but I find the title font more interesting. It is almost cyclopean, resembling thick stone blocks, with cracks and weathering on its surface. It fits the gameplay quite well, which is of course mining through and building with a lot of different types of stone. It is also relatively cartoony, with thick shadows giving it an oblique look, which fits with the stylised blocky aesthetic of Minecraft.

All in all, my research has shown that the best fonts for games are those which exacerbate the game's theme. Therefore, for use in menus, I have also picked up the font "Bad Coma" and the font "City Burn".

I chose these fonts because they look partially destroyed and decaying, which relates to the neurodegeneration caused by Alzheimer's.

[kustar-ryumi]

Hi! Sorry to bother you but I need a little help on how to change the page on carrd, I'm just wondering if there is like a link or something to create separately from the home page and make it clickable for the buttons? Like what you did for your about me and faq page.

Thanks :)

alrighty!!!. cracking knuckles (view images from left->right)

Press the (+) icon!! There should be a popup, you should be able to find (# Control) at the bottom right corner of that popup <- press it.

Section Control should come up after pressing it. KEEP EVERYTHANG THE SAME. The only thing that should be changed is the section name. (For example: About Me = #aboutme)(<-section names only allow lowercase letters, no uppercase)

Since your buttons are already set up, you can just set the buttons URL as that section's name (include the '#')

You can start putting stuff under that section!!

btw i recommend you put a button for 'home' (URL for that button is #home)(dont want anyone to be stuck in a section LOLL)

Anyways, here's a way to view only one section or all of them while editing!! (when you make a new section, click on that new section and a blank page will show up, you can work to your hearts delight!!)

yeahhhhhh sorry if this is all super yada yada!! :3

[grandlinewiki]

Welcome to the Wiki Tumblr!

Hoi!

This it the tumblr for Grand Line Wiki, a One Piece wiki project I have been spending over a year on now. The goal of this tumblr is to garner some general support and notability but also just to update what gets added, why I do what I do, and to generally have fun as I make it. You can expect consistent One Piece content and a cool look into the manga/anime/video games/music of One Piece <3

Any support at all is extremely helpful as this is a one gal project and it takes time but I hope you enjoy the content regardless, so please expect plenty to come!

Website: grandlinewiki.net

Wiki Patreon: patreon.com/grandlinewiki

Wiki Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/jadeparcels

FAQ:

(↓ Under here ↓)

→ Why are you making a wiki if there's already a fandom/wikia for One Piece?

A few reasons but without going super in depth, the current wikia has it's issues as some of the pages aren't consistent or accurate as well as the fact that fandom has made their website difficult to use due to the massive amount of advertising and popups. My overall goal is to be ad free on this wiki as well as being a comprehensive, thorough, and enjoyable database that is fun to go through.

→ The news on the home page hasn't updated!

Yes, the home page for right now is more of a landing page as filling in the wiki itself is of higher priority. I hope to actually be able to give daily updates later on but for now, it'll help you get where you need :3

→ The search bar doesn't work!

Yes, while i have played around with it, it hasn't been the first priority since there's nothing worth searching for if the pages don't exist/haven't been filled in. This will be towards the end as I still have manga, anime, and character pages to fill in and complete. For now you can use the buttons on the left side to get to the main sections and when the homepage is redone, it'll have a comprehensive sidebar that will span all aspects so you can check out what ever you like.

→ How long do you think it'll take?

I'll be honest, it's been a rough year and to not even have the manga section done is it's own bummer (╥ω╥) BUT patreon support would help so much as it would fund the wiki and help to somewhat keep me afloat as I dedicate more time to it. Overall, expect it to be another year at least, I will do my best to make it exciting to follow and with luck (and a lot of coffee) I can have something solid by this time next year.

→ Can I make suggestions, throw out ideas for what I'd like to see?

Yes!! I love hearing other peoples ideas and this wiki is a love letter! It only makes sense if other peoples love for One Piece is included! If I don't respond right away, I apologize but I will do my best to get to every idea and will let you know if it's worth doing, if it would take awhile, and how soon i could do it. ⸜( *ˊᵕˋ* )⸝

[iviarellereads]

Harrow the Ninth, Prologue

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For detail on The Locked Tomb coverage and the index, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

(Insectoid Herald icon) In which we are shown a lot of things that make us ask questions, and asked to be patient in the getting of answers.

A Note Up Front:

The Dramatis Personae of Gideon the Ninth was sometimes useful in keeping track of who was from which House. The DP of Harrow the Ninth might seem beside the point at first, given that only a few of the Lyctors still live. But, I'd recommend having a nice close look at it. See if anything stands out to you. Like for example, the way ORTUS the Ninth is capitalized. And how Harrow's cavalier's name is blacked out with layers and layers of printed letters. It will also be useful as different names come up, as the book progresses and we learn more about the history of God's inner circle. Also review the House poem, as it's been expanded some from Gideon's edition. Take every hint you can, with this book.

I often pitch Gideon the Ninth as a locked-house murder mystery. Harrow is much more complex, though the pitch I've found the most success with and the most positive feedback to is more or less, "Harrow the Ninth is like a popup Michelin-starred restaurant experience, only the food is served under total cover of darkness, and nothing that's served is what was on the menu up front, but somehow it's also exactly what it promised to be and exactly what you needed."

Try not to feel ashamed or frustrated if you don't understand the mysteries at play. You're not supposed to. There are hints, yes, and some of the things I gesture at in the text will be parts of that breadcrumb trail, but the wide experience of Harrow the Ninth is not understanding any of what's going on until the very end. It's the expected experience. I've seen different people piece together different pieces of the tangled web, but I've never seen anybody accurately guess what's coming until the proper reveals.

With that said:

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE EMPEROR'S MURDER(1)

Told in a mysterious second-person(2) which I'm going to flatten to third for my purposes, but I really do ask that you read each chapter before you read my summaries to get the full effect.

The room has been dark for some time, the thump of the Heralds flinging themselves onto the hull clearly audible. It's very cold, and a thin layer of frost covers Harrow's face and hair. Sometimes she screams, and she isn't even embarrassed anymore. It's just her body's reaction to the proximity.(3)

God's voice emerges from the comm, telling them it's ten minutes to breach. They'll have half an hour of air conditioning, then they'll "be working in the oven." He tells Harrow he'll keep hers closed longer, and Harrow staggers through the concentric circles of bone matter(4) she's laid out as her weapons to be to the comm button and snaps that she can take care of herself. He says her necromancy won't work in the River. She says she is a Lyctor, his hand, and if he wants a hand who needs to hide, she's misjudged him.

She hears the exhale of his sigh, and he tells her not to be in such a hurry to die. She says not to underestimate her, she's survived everything so far.

Harrow moves back to the middle of the room. She sits cross-legged, with her rapier in her lap, fighting the urge to throw it across the room.

The door slides open, and Ianthe the First(5) enters, without setting off Harrow's traps. Her rapier looks black, and the bones of her right arm(6) gleam an oily gold. Harrow closes her eyes to her. Ianthe says she would protect Harrow, if Harrow would only ask. Harrow gives some vivid descriptions of ghastly things she'd rather have done to her than to be protected by Ianthe. Ianthe, however, says hopefully that she hears a "maybe", and asks Harrow to stop being coy. Harrow says not to pretend that Ianthe is "here for anything other than to look after an investment."

Ianthe says she came to warn Harrow.

"You came to warn me?" Your voice sounded flat and affectless, even to you. "You came to warn me now?"

Ianthe approaches, crunching the bone circles.(7) Harrow can sense her fear, even without trying.

"Nonagesimus, nobody is coming to save you. Not God. Not Augustine.(8) Nobody." There was no mockery in her voice now, but there was something else: excitement, perhaps, or unease.(9) "You'll be dead within the first half hour. You're a sitting duck. Unless there's something in one of those letters(10) I don't know about, you're out of tricks."

Harrow feels Ianthe cup her chin in her hands, the flesh fingers almost feverish compared to the gilded bone ones, and is shocked into opening her eyes, not quite sure it's not a hallucination. Ianthe is before Harrow, "in unmistakable supplication." Her gaze is both beseeching and full of "contemptuous despair", her "blue eyes with deep splotches of light brown, like agate." Ianthe tells Harrow she can undo what Harrow has done, if she just turns around.(11) Together, at full power, they could "rip apart this Resurrection Beast and come away unscathed." Save the whole galaxy, let them weep to talk of Ianthe and Harrowhark.

"The past is dead, and they're both dead, but you and I are alive. What are they? What are they, other than one more corpse we're dragging behind us?"(12)

Harrow judges that Ianthe's expression is excitement, not unease, and senses that this is an important moment.

She tells Ianthe to go fuck herself.

Ianthe's face freezes back into a mocking mask.

"I didn't think this was the time for dirty talk, but I can roll with it," she said. "Choke me, Daddy."

Harrow tells Ianthe to get out. Ianthe says Harrow always was stubborn, and maybe she should have died at Canaan House. Harrow says Ianthe should have killed her sister, because her eyes don't match her face.

God's voice interrupts before Ianthe can retort, reminding them of the time, four minutes left, and make sure they're in their places.

Ianthe turns away from Harrow, trailing her "human fingers" across the wall as she walks back to the exit, and says, "Well, I tried, and therefore no one should criticize me,"(13) then ducks out of the room. Harrow is left "profoundly alone" as it starts to warm up.

She thinks about opening the envelope, addressed to herself, that reads "To open in case of your imminent death."

She calms herself as some distant part of the station gives a crunch of plex and metal. She cocoons herself in perpetual bone, foolish since it will dissolve when she submerges in the River, but still she adds layer after layer.

Throughout the Mithraeum, five pairs of eyes closed in concert, one of them yours. Unlike theirs, yours would not open again. In half an hour, no matter what Teacher(14) might hope, you would be dead.

The Lyctors and the Emperor start to submerge themselves in the River to face off with the Resurrection Beast. Harrow wades with them, but leaves her vulnerable meat behind.

"I pray the tomb is shut forever," you heard yourself saying aloud, and you could not bring your voice above a choked whisper. "I pray the rock is never rolled away. I pray that which was buried remains buried, insensate, in perpetual rest with closed eye and stilled brain. I pray it lives ... O corse of the Locked Tomb," you extemporised wildly. "Beloved dead, hear your handmaiden. I loved you with my whole rotten, contemptible heart--I loved you to the exclusion of aught else--let me live long enough to die at your feet." Then you went under to make war on Hell. * * * Hell spat you back out. Fair enough.

Harrow doesn't wake up in the River, on the other side of the veil. She wakes in the corridor outside her room, sweating, and... bleeding, her own rapier sticking out of her stomach, stuck from behind. The wound is not a hallucination, and Harrow is too far gone to knit it together with her magic. Even if she wanted to, she couldn't read the imminent death letter.

You were only half a Lyctor, and half a Lyctor was worse than not a Lyctor at all.

Outside, the Heralds of the Resurrection Beast are so thick they block the stars, and they're heating the ship far too effectively. Harrow hears distant swordfighting and flinches from a sound she's hated since birth.

You prepared to die with the Locked Tomb on your lips. But your idiot dying mouth rounded out three totally different syllables, and they were syllables you did not even understand.(15)

=====

(1) I hope you didn't think this was going to be a particularly happy story. (2) Not everyone knows what the perspectives are! So, there are three and a half perspectives to tell a story from. The first person is oneself, so the story is told in "I" pronouns. The second person is talking to the self, and is told in "you" pronouns. The third person is an outside observer, and uses third-person pronouns (she, they, he). The third person can also be "omniscient" (able to read everyone's thoughts and tell absolute truths), or "close" (as if sitting on one character's shoulder, only able to hear their thoughts and see through their perspective to some degree) or switch between the two if the writer feels particularly ambitious. Gideon the Ninth was told in third person close perspective, but Harrow… is a bit of a goodie bag of treats. For now, this is second-person, a story being told to a person, for some reason. If it unsettles you, I implore you to bear with it, as I think Muir really earns it out. If you have a guess as to why it's being told from this perspective on your first read, bravo, you're paying more attention than I did my first time. (Just don't get me started on the temporal tense of the narrative and how changing it can play with the perspectives, or we'll be here all day.) (3) The proximity of what exactly? Oh yes. We'll get there. (4) Protective circles are a long-established trope and I don't want anyone to miss the way they're invoked here, given what's to come. (5) This is still the same Ianthe, "the First" is just the honorary given to the Lyctors, as their ascension means inclusion in the Emperor's house, as his guard, his saints, his hands. See: the House poem in the front of the book. (Told you it would come in handy.) (6) Ah yes, the arm she lost in the battle with Cytherea. Golden bone sounds fun and very Third. And now you can look at a lot of Ianthe fanart spoiler-free! (7) Ianthe, violating the protective circle Harrow has laid out. Is this a deeper gesture, or something meaningless? I don't feel qualified to tell you without spoiling something but I'll note that I picked this out on my first read, and I still think it's interesting to think about. (8) Here, again, the Dramatis Personae. One of the remaining living Lyctors. To avoid this being a redundant footnote: why would Ianthe assume that Harrow would assume God or Augustine, in that order, would rescue her? Why would she not assume the others would? (9) I know which way I lean, knowing what I do of the rest of the book, but what about first time readers? (10) Letters, you ask? I know this is a lot being thrown at you. I promise, we'll get there. For now, another thing to keep in mind. (11) What has Harrow done? Yes at this point I'm sort of offering a list of the mysteries in the book more than I'm offering commentary in footnotes. (12) Who is the "they" in this context? (13) The memes return! This one is from a Saturday Night Live sketch with Daniel Radcliffe, from 2012. The sketch itself is… bad, it's bad, it's feeding into the same myth of millennials being over-praised that keeps proving itself wronger every year but still keeps on a-ticking, but the moment of this line has nevertheless become an iconic meme, used to make fun of people with too much confidence in their abilities. (14) Teacher? The dead multisoul construct from Canaan House? He did once say that he hoped the candidates would go on to call God their Teacher someday… (15) What could matter to Harrow that constitutes just three syllables to say? Why wouldn't she understand them?